The BFD-3600 sat open on the workshop bench like a patient on an operating table.
Tess had cleared a space around it: tools to the left, diagnostic readouts on the mounted screen above, a tray of salvaged parts from the estate’s stores laid out in order of probable need. The light in the workshop made it look worse than it was.
Which was saying something, because it looked terrible.
Asha sat on a stool across from the bench, arms folded, watching Tess work with the focus of someone who’d been waiting months for this moment.
Cici lay curled near the bench’s base, nose resting on her front paws.
Tess had already run [ANALYZE]. She knew the readout by heart: five modules down, two waiting at her Tech level, the core mechanism sound beneath the damage. Now she was inside it, panels removed, internals exposed, her hands tracing the architecture with the patience of someone reading a story written in wire and crystal.
“The focusing array is the worst of it,” she said. “Impact knocked the components off true. Doesn’t sound like much until you’re pushing twenty-four aether-watts through it. At that tolerance, the beam disperses before it cuts.”
“Tried having it realigned on Kovacs,” Asha said. “Two shops looked at it. First one said the crystal was cracked. It isn’t. Second one said the array housing needed replacing, seven thousand credits. Didn’t have seven thousand credits.”
“The housing is fine.” Tess rotated the assembly under the light. “Also, whoever was looking at it re-seated the crystal poorly. The mounting pins bent on one side, so it settled about half a millimeter off its original position.”
After fixing dozens of systems and cameras on Floor 1, Tess had learned a few tricks.
She selected a fine-gauge tool from a tray and began working the first mounting pin back to true. It was a nice change from having to do repairs in the field. The pin was hardened alloy, designed to hold under thermal stress, which meant it resisted being moved almost as much as it had resisted being bent in the first place.
“Where’d you get this?” Tess asked.
“Family. Was my grandmother’s.”
“Your grandmother owned a BFD-3600?”
“Got it as loot. Long time ago.” Asha’s voice carried the weight of something well-worn, a story told and retold around engine rooms and cargo holds. “Different dungeon, different system. Place called Harken’s Deep. Resource dungeon. No combat floors, just veins of crystal and ore running through kilometers of tunnels. Miners could work there, mostly safe. Grandmother said the dungeon wanted people mining it. Like it was designed for that.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Was. Until the Network ‘assessed’ it complete.” The word came out sharply. “Sealed the lower tunnels. Said they were unstable. Miners lost access to seventy percent of the veins overnight. Grandmother took her drill and went looking for work that didn’t need permission.” Asha watched Tess’s hands work. “Drill been in the family ever since. Three generations. Finally crapped out last year, right when we needed it most.”
“What happened?”
“Brother dropped it off a loading platform on Kovacs. Fifteen-meter fall onto decking.” Asha’s mouth twitched. “Was carrying too much, trying to do two trips in one. Stupid mistake.”
“This thing survived a fifteen meter fall with only these issues? Your grandmother picked good loot.”
“Not called the BFD for nothing. When it worked.”
“It’ll work,” Tess said.
The first mounting pin gave with a faint tick. Tess moved to the second, coaxing it with the same measured pressure, and seated the crystal back into position. Through [ANALYZE], the alignment looked clean.
The power cell housing was next. The casing had cracked along a stress line, not likely from the fall but from thermal cycling over years of use. Heat, cool, heat, cool, and eventually the micro-fractures linked up. Standard failure mode for equipment that got worked hard and maintained on a budget.
Tess patched the crack with a bonding compound from the workshop stores, reinforced the weakened section with a strip of conductive tape, and tested the cell. It held a charge. The cell itself was sound. The housing needed to stop letting heat bleed where it shouldn’t.
Connectors next. Three of the five power conduit junctions had corroded past the point of reliable contact. Standard mil-spec connectors. She had replacements in the second drawer of the parts cabinet. Two matched perfectly. The third was close enough with minor filing.
Then she hit a problem.
“Huh.”
“‘Huh’ good or ‘huh’ bad?” Asha asked.
Tess was staring at the thermal regulation module. The primary heat sink was intact, but the lens that sat in front of the emitter—a disc of treated glass about the size of her thumb—was clouded beyond use.
“Bad. I need a focusing lens. Treated glass, specific curvature, rated for high-thermal applications.” She sat back. “I don’t have one.”
“Can it work without?”
“It won’t focus. The beam spreads instead of cutting.” Tess turned the ruined lens between her fingers. “Like trying to drill with a flashlight.”
Asha’s jaw set. “How specialized?”
“Pretty standard stuff for mining equipment or laser welders.” Tess looked at Cici. “Any ideas?”
Cici’s head lifted from her paws. “Vera Kain has several objects that smell like that. I cataloged the display cases during our last visit. Third shelf from the top, near the rear wall.”
Tess stared at her. “You cataloged her shelves?”
“I catalog everything. My hardware insists.”
***
The midmorning tram to Sector 6 was half-empty, and Asha sat across from her, legs stretched into the aisle, watching the city with the attention of someone still building a mental map.
“Different from Kovacs?” Tess asked.
“Everything’s open.” Asha gestured at the window. “Sky. Wind. Streets that go somewhere instead of connecting to other corridors. Kovacs is sealed. Recycled air, recycled water, recycled light. First few days here, kept looking for a pressure suit every time I went outside.”
Cici rode between them, sitting upright on the seat like a passenger who’d purchased a ticket. An elderly man across the aisle had been staring at her since they boarded. Cici stared back with polite, unblinking intensity.
“He smells like pipe tobacco and engine grease,” Cici whispered to Tess. “I find it very pleasant and I don’t know why.”
They finally arrived at the gates to Sector 6 and made their way to Vera’s.
She was behind the counter, datapad in one hand, reading glasses perched on her nose. She looked up when the door chimed and her expression shifted through recognition, assessment, and pointed interest in about half a second.
“Twice in one week. I’m honored.” Her gaze moved to Asha. Held there. “And you’ve brought company I haven’t met. How unusual.”
“Vera, this is Asha. She’s working with us.”
Vera extended a hand across the counter. “Vera Kain. I sell things people need at prices they complain about but pay anyway.”
Asha shook it. “Asha. Heard you’re the one to see for hard-to-find parts.”
“Depends on the part. And on who’s asking.” Vera’s eyes did the thing they always did: calculating the net worth of everyone in the room, including the dog. “That kit on your belt. Homemade?”
Asha glanced down. “Half of it.”
“And the other half?”
“Better than homemade.”
Vera made a sound that might have been approval. She turned to Cici, who had taken up a position at the base of the counter like a sentry. “And you’re back. Still talking, I hope?”
“Hello, Vera. You smell like expensive tea. I approve.”
“It approves.” Vera looked at Tess over her glasses. “You gave it opinions?”
“She came with opinions.”
“I need a focusing lens,” Tess said. “Treated glass, high-thermal rated. Curvature for a bore emitter, roughly this size.” She set the ruined lens on the counter.
Vera took it, turned it under the counter light, and clicked her tongue. “Someone dropped something heavy on something expensive.”
“Something like that.”
“Third shelf, rear wall, left side. The case marked ‘optical.’ I have four. They’re from a decommissioned geological survey platform. Two are standard, two are precision-ground.” She set the damaged lens down. “Standard will work. Precision will work better. Standard is forty credits. Precision is two hundred.”
Tess looked at Asha.
“Precision,” Asha said without hesitating. “Not cutting corners on the thing that points the beam.”
“Good call.” Vera was already moving. She returned with a small case, popped it open, and presented a lens that caught the light like a small, perfect window. Unblemished and optically flawless.
Tess held it up. The light passed through cleanly and evenly, with no distortion.
“This is perfect,” she said.
“Everything I sell is perfect. That’s why it costs what it costs.” Vera processed the payment on the Tertian account without further comment, then glanced between them. “Mining drill?”
“…Survey equipment,” Tess lied.
“Of course it is.” Vera handed over the case. “Tess. When you have a moment, I still want the full technical specifications on that neural processor repair. Dean asked about it twice.”
“Dean asked about the dog?”
“Dean asks about everything you do. It’s becoming a pattern I may need to charge him for.” She waved them toward the door. “Go. Fix your—ahem—survey equipment.”
The walk back to the tram stop took them through Sector 6’s market street. The midday heat had settled in, warm air carrying the smell of food stalls and hot metal from a fabrication shop with its doors propped wide. Asha walked with her hands in her pockets, scanning rooftops and alleyways out of what looked like permanent habit.
“Like her,” Asha said.
“Everyone does. Eventually.”
“Reminds me of a woman on Kovacs. Ran the supply depot on C-deck. Knew everything about everyone. Charged accordingly.” Asha’s mouth twitched. “Same energy. Thicker glasses.”
***
The precision lens seated into the thermal regulation module as if it had been made for it. Which, it basically was.
Tess ran the last connections, sealed the last panel, and stepped back. The BFD-3600 sat on the workbench, reassembled, every component reading green through [ANALYZE]. Primary focusing array: aligned. Power cell: holding. Thermal regulation: online. Beam calibration: degraded but functional. Crystalline Bore Assist alive for the first time. Resonance Bore Mode and Harmonic Cutting are both waiting for power, both within her Tech level.
“Should test it before we trust it underground,” Tess said.
The [ANALYZE] readout agreed with her in principle but disagreed on the method. Power: 0.0 / 24.0 AW. The cell was repaired, not charged.
“It needs power,” Tess said. “A lot of it.”
The estate workshop had capacitor banks in storage, the portable kind they used to recharge equipment in the dungeon. Tess found three in a supply closet behind the workbench, each the size of a toolbox and heavy enough that Asha helped her carry the last one. She wired them in series to the drill’s charging port and let them drain.
The first bank got the cell to four aether-watts. The second brought it to eight. The third pushed it to eleven.
“That’s three banks and we’re not even at half,” Tess said, watching the readout climb and stop. Eleven out of twenty-four. “This thing is hungry.”
“Mining drills aren’t meant to sip power,” Asha said. “On Kovacs, we’d run it off the station grid.”
Eleven aether-watts would have to do. Enough for a test fire and, if she was careful, enough for the cut.
She found a scrap piece of plasteel in the workshop stores, a thick plate roughly half a meter square, the kind used for hull patches. She propped it against the far wall, backed up five meters, and lifted the BFD-3600.
The weight was significant. She braced it against her hip, sighted down the barrel housing, and squeezed the trigger.
The beam punched through the plasteel plate as if it wasn’t there. A clean, circular hole appeared in the center, edges glowing cherry-red. The beam kept going. It hit the stone wall behind the plate and left a scorched black crater the size of a dinner plate, a full meter higher than where she’d aimed. Smoke curled from both surfaces. The workshop’s air filtration clicked on, fans spinning to clear the haze of vaporized metal and charred stone.
Tess released the trigger. The BFD-3600 whined down, heat venting from the housing in shimmering waves.
“That…” Tess said.
“Yeah,” Asha said.
They both stared at the wall.
“Might need to adjust the power curve,” Tess said.
“Or just remember to aim.”
Cici’s ears were flat against her head. “That was very loud. I am recalibrating my audio sensors. Also, the wall appears to be smoldering.”
It was. Tess grabbed the workshop extinguisher and hit it with a brief burst of foam.
“It works,” she said. She checked the readout. “Spinning it up takes a lot of power, we’ll need to charge it fully.”
Tess fitted the drill back into the plasteel case, and they took the elevator down to the Guild Hall. The situation table was empty, chairs pushed back, datapads scattered where people had left them after breakfast. Everyone else had gone to prepare. The holo-projection was still running, Floor 1 and Floor 2 side by side, but the layout had changed.
Bee had run the reset.
“The rotation completed an hour ago,” Bee said through the speakers. “I optimized the tunnel geometry in the eastern quadrant. The new configuration places Floor 1 tunnel section D-7 approximately parallel to the projected Floor 2 maintenance network.”
Two green markers pulsed on the Floor 1 map. One in Sector D, deep in the tunnel network. The other further east, near a junction.
“D-7 is the better approach,” Bee continued. “I could push the tunnel as deep into Floor 1’s limit as possible. It should run just about parallel to one from Floor 2.”
Tess studied the route from the staging area to D-7. She’d been in these tunnels dozens of times. Floor 1’s maintenance network was familiar ground. The route to D-7 would take her deeper than she’d gone before, but the path was straightforward.
“I’m going in,” she said.
Asha looked at her. “Now?”
“Reset’s done. Layout’s locked. The longer we wait, the more time we waste, plus we have more capacitors in the staging areas.” She was already checking her kit. Communicator, tools, pulse pistol, plasteel sheeting to seal a hole if it didn’t work. “Combat team can run Floor 2 as cover while I drill.”
She activated her communicator. “Petra. You there?”
A moment of static, then Petra’s voice. “Here. We’re in the staging area. Yuki’s checking her rifle for the sixth time. Mikhail is… stretching.”
Yuki’s voice was distant: “Seventh.”
“You’re already inside?” Tess asked.
“Yuki’s very persuasive, plus you said you wanted to go in after the reset.” A pause. “Floor 2 is no joke, so if things get to be too much for us, we’ll have to leave. Try to be quick?”
“I’ll do my best. I’ve got Bee to guide me. Will let you know when I’m in position.”
The communicator clicked off.
Asha was already standing. “Taking me to the staging area, yeah? Want to see it.”
“You can’t come into the tunnels. There’s a whole security thing.”
“Didn’t ask to. Just want to feel useful with everyone already doing it.”
Tess pulled the BFD-3600 from the plasteel case and loaded it onto the mag-lev board. The board took the weight without complaint, hovering at hip height, steady. She stacked the plasteel sheeting on top.
They took the Guild elevator down to Floor 1, then walked out into the staging area. Asha took it in with a slow, deliberate sweep: the capacitor banks humming against the far wall, the sealed door to Floor 1, the low ceiling, the ambient thrum of dungeon energy.
“Smaller than I expected,” Asha said.
“It does the job.”
Asha found a crate near the capacitor banks and sat down . “I’ll be here. Comms open.”
Tess connected the BFD to the capacitors.
The readout climbed. Eleven. Fifteen. Twenty. The bank’s output was stronger down here, closer to the dungeon’s Aether supply. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Full charge.
“Now we see what the BFD can really do,” Tess said, disconnecting the drill and settling it back onto the board.
Asha patted the capacitor bank. “Good batteries.”
Tess opened the maintenance hatch and stepped through into Floor 1’s tunnels, the mag-lev board floating beside her. The chill of the dungeon settled on her skin.
A clicking sound behind her. She turned.
Cici was standing at the threshold, head tilted, studying the opening. She placed one paw on the lip. Then another. The hatch didn’t snap shut.
“Oh,” Cici said, and stepped through. “I am allowed in! The hardware is very pleased about this. I am experiencing what I believe is excitement, though it may be a sensor calibration issue.”
“You want to come?”
“I can detect active electronics through walls. I am useful.” Her tail was going. “Also, I have never been in the tunnels and I would like to smell them.”
They moved through Floor 1’s maintenance network. The mag-lev board followed Tess on auto, hovering behind her, the BFD-3600 riding steady on its surface. The corridors were the same as always. Dim emergency lighting and stale air meant for machines, not foot traffic.
Cici ranged ahead, nose to the ground, cataloging everything. “Crystalline dust. Plasteel particulate. Something organic, very old. I think an actual rodent lived here once. How odd.” She paused at a junction, ears rotating. “No active electronics ahead.”
They passed through two junctions and descended a ramp that curved down into Sector D’s deeper tunnels. Then a second ramp, steeper, where the mag-lev board adjusted its hover height to compensate for the angle. A maintenance ladder leading to a lower level. Tess climbed down while the board dropped through the shaft opening beside her, smooth and level.
Cici solved the ladder problem by jumping. She landed with a metallic clack, skidded slightly on the smooth floor, and pretended she’d meant to.
“Graceful,” Tess said.
“I am learning about the feel of gravity. It is very satisfying.”
The tunnels narrowed as they went deeper, the air growing warmer. The emergency lights shifted to a brighter white, like Bee had turned the lights on, and the walls showed more crystalline growth, thin veins tracing through the plasteel like capillaries.
“Temperature increasing,” Cici reported. “Also, the floor smells different here. Less dust, more mineral. And something electrical. Faint.”
BEE: You are approaching D-7. Twenty meters ahead, the tunnel widens at a junction node. The wall there on your right corresponds to my optimal drill point. Projected distance to Floor 2 tunnel network: two and a half meters.
Tess read the text and kept walking. The tunnel widened exactly where Bee said it would, a junction node where three corridors met, the ceiling slightly higher than the surrounding passages. The crystalline veins in the walls were thicker here, pulsing with a dim light that hadn’t been present in the upper tunnels.
It was warm. Genuinely warm, like standing near running machinery. The air tasted denser, faintly metallic.
Cici pressed her nose against the wall and held still for a few seconds. “Right here.” Her tail did something involuntarily, and she ignored it.
Tess guided the mag-lev board into position. She angled the BFD-3600 towards the wall and locked the board’s hover in place.
She activated her communicator. “Petra. I’m in position.”
“Moving to Floor 2 now. Give us five minutes to make some noise.”
BEE: Communicator signal should hold through the material. If it degrades, I can relay. I will monitor from every sensor available to me.
Tess pulled her ear and eye protection from her kit. She’d learned from the test fire. Checked the board’s stability one more time. Made sure the plasteel sheeting was within reach.
Two and a half meters. One drill. And whatever was on the other side.
“Ready, Cici?”
Cici sat beside the mag-lev board, ears forward, tail still. For once, the hardware wasn’t doing anything she hadn’t allowed.
“Ready,” she said.
Tess wrapped both hands around the BFD-3600’s grip, braced her feet, and put her finger on the trigger.